his likely replacement, chuck hagel, a dod budget cutter as far as we know. i'm wondering how this whole exercise is going to affect national security. here now is retired u.s. army general barry mccaffrey, military analyst for nbc news. general mccaffrey, welcome back. about $55 billion this year. can it be cut without compromising our national security, sir? >> it certainly will be an inefficient way to run a railroad. for god's sake there's only seven months left in the fiscal year. so leon panetta will go shopping with 2500 investment accounts and try and pull stuff out, not people. too late to do that. so they've got to go to the defense industry and tell them look we're not buying that many items this year. it's a lousy way to defend the country. >> well i'm sure you're right about that. but looking at the longer term issue here, the sequester itself is a ten-year issue. here's a question from one of the things i read today. why do we have a $70 billion military budget in europe? do we really need all those bases in all those resources? $70 billion. >>